Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Do we have the gumption to vote them out of office? Otherwise, God help us! After all, they work for us, not the other way around.

Wake up to the facts !!!!

545 vs 300,000,000EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.

545 PEOPLEBy Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered; if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red..

If the Army &Marines are in IRAQ , It's because they want them in IRAQ

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people and they alone, are responsible.

They and they alone, have the power.

They and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

What you do with this article now that you have read it.......... Is up to you.

THINK THIS IS FUNNY?Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.What in the hell happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'And I still have to 'press 1' for English!?

Sunday, December 06, 2009

From: Dee Rohe <drrohe@yahoo.com>Subject: At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state

All part of These Times scenario.deexxoo

Per B. Horton:

"Friends this is a TURNING POINT IN HISTORY.............DEC 1st....ROMAN EMPIRE has come back."

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. Genesis 12:3

----- Original Message ----- From: 'Sightedmoon' To: sightedmoon@sightedmoon.com Sent: Fri Dec 4 20:28 Subject: Fwd: At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state

Shabbat Shalom Again Brethren, I had to send this out right away. A huge turning point in History was made this week and I missed it. Then one brother sent this to me which I just had to send out now. What Germany could not do in two world wars she has now done in stealth. If you do not know the the history of the Holy Roman Empire and who was the head of it, Germany, then read this article at http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?page=book&q=1194.6.0.0 You can order it for free. I also strongly recommend you purchase this book at http://www.originofnations.org/Great_German_Nation/index.html

No Matter what else happens, December 1 2009 or 13th of the Ninth month in the year 5845 A.C. THE ROMAN EMPIRE CAME BACK INTO BEING. It will become the Holy Roman Empire when the King of the EU is crowned by the Pope in the coming years. 2010 is the start of the 4th Sabbatical after the 2520 years. Babylon fell in 539 BC, there is no year "0". When we add 2520 to 539 BC this brings you to 1982 C.E. 28 years later or 4 seven year periods later, brings us to 2010. The stump of Daniel's prophecy is growing in front of our very eyes. Yes we are now going into the most terrifying of times ever in the History of the world. Are you watching, are you ready, are you moving closer to Yahweh everyday.

2010 is also the year that Israel's captivity curse is over 7 X 390 is 2730 years. when we add this to the year the curse of Captivity started in 721 BC this brings you to 2010 C.E.

2010 C.E. is also the beginning of the next Sabbatical Cycle of years which is the curse of Pestilence and famines and Earthquakes.

2010 is the year when Europe will make Herman Van Rompuy, whom we wrote to you about last week, President of the European Union.

Brethren this was a huge event this week, I hope you grasp the Immensity of the events now taking place.

At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state

We woke up in a different country today. Alright, it doesn't look very different. The trees still seem black against the winter sun; the motorways continue to jam inexplicably; commuters carry on avoiding eye contact. But Britain is no longer a sovereign nation. At midnight last night, we ceased to be an independent state, bound by international treaties to other independent states, and became instead a subordinate unit within a European state.

Yes, a European state. Take a quick dekko at the definition set out in Article One of the1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: "The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states."

Until yesterday, the EU qualified on grounds (a), (b) and (c). Now it has ticked the final box. Under the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force today, it acquires "legal personality", which gives it the right to sign accords and treat with other states. Nor is this right simply theoretical: the EU now has a foreign minister, a diplomatic corps (the European External Action Service) and 160 overseas embassies.

Until yesterday, the EU could not annex additional policy areas without a new treaty, which needed to be ratified by all its constituent nations. Now, it has the so-called "passerelle" clause, or self-amending mechanism. Parliament, in other words, no longer has the final say on extensions of EU jurisdiction. The EU derives its authority, not from its 27 members, but from its own foundational texts.

Until yesterday, Britain could simply walk out of the EU by abrogating the Treaty of Rome and repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. Henceforth, it will have to go through the secession procedure laid down in Lisbon. In other words - in the minds of Euro-lawyers, at any rate, if not of British constitutionalists - the EU gets to settle the terms on which its members are allowed to leave. Formal sovereignty has been shifted from the national capitals to Brussels.

It is appalling, demeaning, disgraceful that such a thing should have been done without popular consent, and in the absence of the referendum that all three parties had promised. "There's no point in crying over spilt milk," you might say. True. But there is every point in mopping it up.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

What will it take for an atrocity like Ft. Hood to be called "terrorism"? I am concerned about the deception that is out there right now. Clearly people and events need to be called what they are! If you fail to do this your conscience may already be compromised ... the scriptures call it "seared". An interesting read:...http://www.gospeltruth.net/1841OE/410428_seared_consci_pt1.htmYet even now there is a hope ... Jesus, Yeshua, Esa who is the same yesterday, today and forever. He alone has made a way through the new covenant of His blood. His birth, death and resurrection mark a new start for anyone who will believe on Him. He restores and and makes all things new. http://bible.cc/1_john/5-12.htmhttp://bible.cc/2_corinthians/5-17.htmShalom,gRead More

WASHINGTON — The government intercepted at least 18 e-mails between the alleged Fort Hood gunman and a radical Muslim cleric, and a key senator says there could be more communications that might have tipped off law enforcement or military officials.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

It has been reported that planes had been spraying in the Ukraine where there is a plague/flu epidemic happening now.

Today, Roy called me outside to show me a couple of big chemtrails up there, the first ones I've seen in quite a while. I took a couple of pictures of them, holding my breath! Must be getting geared up for the flu season, which will look like a mutated flu and worse. Mark my words.. there will be a great push for us to get vaccinated.

I've already been infected with mycoplasma in 1997 (cured by ozone therapy) and then morgellons around 2000-1 after spending time outdoors under heavy chemtrail skies. The morgellons is still with me - but mostly under control now. It takes constant work to keep it at bay. Not everyone falls prey to these.. it's an immune system weakness which I am addressing with some success.

If you did not enjoy "traditional" chemtrails raining down on you, you are not going to like the new version, which the United States Air Force promises will feature aerial dumps of programmable "smart" molecules tens of thousands of times smaller than the particles already landing people in emergency rooms with respiratory, heart and gastrointestinal complaints.

Under development since 1995, the military's goal is to install microprocessors incorporating gigaflops computer capability into "smart particles" the size of a single molecule.

Invisible except under the magnification of powerful microscopes, these nano-size radio-controlled chips are now being made out of mono-atomic gold particles. Networked together on the ground or assembling in the air, thousands of sensors will link into a single supercomputer no larger than a grain of sand.

Brought to you by the same military-corporate-banking complex that runs America's permanent wars, Raytheon Corp is already profiting from new weather warfare technologies. The world's fourth largest military weapons maker bought E-Systems in 1995, just one year after that military contractor bought APTI, holder of Bernard Eastlund's HAARP patents.

Raytheon also owns General Dynamics, the world's leading manufacturer of military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Raytheon also reports the weather for NOAA through its Advanced Weather Information Processing System. According to researcher Brendan Bombaci of Durango, Colorado, these Raytheon computers are directy linked with their UAV weather modification drones. Bombaci reports that NOAA paid Raytheon more than $300 million for this "currently active, 10-year project."

She goes on to describe the Joint Environmental Toolkit used by the U.S. Air Force in its Weather Weapons System. Just the thing for planet tinkerers. GREEN LIGHT For public consumption, nano-weather control jargon has been sanitized. "Microelectric Mechanical Sensors" (MMS) and "Global Environmental Mechanical Sensors" sound passively benign. But these ultra-tiny autonomous aerial vehicles are neither M&Ms nor gems. [Space.com Oct 31/05] According to a U.S. military flier called Military Progress, "The green light has been given" to disperse swarms of wirelessly-networked nano-bots into the troposphere by remotely-controlled UAV drones for "global warming mitigation."

U.S. Army Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, as well as U.S. Air Force drones "are slated to deploy various payloads for weather warfare," Military Progress asserts.

This dual mission - to slow global warming and use weather as a weapon - seems somewhat contradictory.

FIGHTING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE U.S. Military Inc. is already in the climate change business big time. The single biggest burner of petroleum on this planet, its high-flying aircraft routinely rend Earth's protective radiation shielding with nitrous oxide emissions, while depositing megatons of additional carbon, sulfur and water particles directly into the stratosphere - where they will do three-times more damage than CO2 alone.

Go figure. A single F-15 burns around 1,580 gallons an hour. An Apache gunship gets about one-half mile to the gallon. The 1,838 Abrams tanks in Iraq achieve five gallons to the mile, while firing dusty radioactive shells that will continue destroying human DNA until our sun goes supernova.

A single non-nuclear carrier steaming in support burns 5,600 gallons of bunker fuel in an hour - or two million gallons of bunker oil every 14 days. Every four days, each carrier at sea takes on another half- million gallons of fuel to supply its jets.

The U.S. Air Force consumed nearly half of the Department of Defense's entire fuel supply in 2006, burning 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel aloft.

While flying two to five-hour chemtrails missions to reflect incoming sunlight and slow global warming, a single KC-10 tanker will burn 2,050 gallons of highly toxic jet fuel every hour. The larger and older KC-135 Stratotanker carries 31,275 gallons of chemtrails and burns 2,650 gallons of fuel per hour.

The EPA says that each gallon of gasoline produces 19.4 pounds of CO2. Each gallon of diesel produces 22.2 pounds of CO2.

Total it up and routine operations by a military bigger than all other world militaries combined puts more than 48 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Nearly half that total could be eliminated by ending the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. [TomDispatch.com June 16/07; huffingtonpost.com Oct 29/07]

NANO RAIN Meanwhile, the 60 year quest for weather warfare continues. Though a drone cannot carry a heavy payload, more sub-microscopic weather modification particles can be crammed into a UAV Predator than all the chemtrail slurry packed into a tanker the size of a DC-10. T

According to the air force's own weather modification study, Owning The Weather 2025, clouds of these extremely teeny machines will be dropped into hurricanes and other weather systems to blend with storms and report real time weather data to each other and a larger sensor network.

Then these smart particles will be used to increase or decrease the storm's size and intensity - and "steer" it to "specific targets".

The air force report boasted that nano-chemtrails "will be able to adjust their size to optimal dimensions for a given seeding situation and make adjustments throughout the process." Instead of being sprayed into the air at the mercy of the winds aloft, as is the fate of normal chemtrails, nano versions will be able to "enhance their dispersal" by "adjusting their atmospheric buoyancy" and "communicating with each other" as they steer themselves in a single coordinated flock within their own artificial cloud.

Nano-chemtrails will even "change their temperature and polarity to improve their seeding effects," the air force noted. [Daily Texan July 30/07]

Rutgers University scientist J. Storrs Hall held out the military's hope that these new nano weather-warrior bots: "Interconnected, atmospherically buoyant, and having navigation capability in three dimensions - clouds of microscopic computer particles communicating with each other and with a control system, could provide tremendous capability."

Sounds expensive.

"It is potentially relatively inexpensive to do," Hall clarified. "About the same price per pound as potatoes."

Why so cheap? Because nano particles can be potentially self-replicating. That is, they can be made to reproduce themselves until programmed to stop.

Hopefully.

Maybe.

Sometimes.

Owning The Weather goes on to say that the USAF will "manage and employ a weather-modification capability by the Weather Force Support Element." These weather forces will use real-time updates from swarms of the nano-size "smart sensors" to model developing weather patterns with a super-duper computer.

Based on continually updated forecast, the weather warriors will fly follow-on missions as needed to tweak the storm. It's perfect, crows the air force. "The total weather-modification process becomes "a real-time loop of continuous, appropriate, measured interventions, and feedback capable of producing desired weather behavior."

Really?

Weather modification did not work too well with Katrina.

If the notion of inserting Autonomous Intelligence nanobots into weather systems to monitor, steer and mess with them seems risky, just wait. Around the next cloud corner are coming swarms of airborne nano-bots to optimize wind dispersal patterns for germ warfare. Or chemtrails.

But there's one small hitch. Nobody knows how Earth's atmosphere works. It is so big, so complex and so unpredictable, even real-time nano-snapshots are ancient history as soon as they are taken.

This is why the air force said, "Advances in the science of chaos are critical to this endeavor."

Good luck. After a decade of trying, not even a 48-hour weather forecast can be made without constant surprises.

SICKOS The chemtrails we are too familiar with after a decade-long dose continue to inflict eye infections, nosebleeds, skin sores, muscle pain, chronic exhaustion, weakened immunity, acute asthma and allergies, short-term memory loss and heart attacks on people in more than a dozen countries. [americanskywatch.com; Chemtrails Confirmed 2008 by William Thomas]Small particulates like the aluminum oxide found in chemtrails also kill.

Dr. Dan Woodard calls aluminum oxide a "nuisance dust". This MD says that prolonged exposures to very high concentrations of particulates that are visible in the air "can produce pulmonary fibrosis, somewhat like the silicosis formerly seen in miners."

"At one time it was thought to precipitate Alzheimer's disease, but more recent research has shown it is almost certainly unrelated," Dr. Woodward adds.

It's the tiny size of chemtrail fallout - one-tenth the width of the human hair - that make people very ill. The EPA warns that there is a strong link between all tiny particles and thousands of premature deaths each year.

Two key studies from the early 1990's by the Harvard School of Public Health and the American Cancer Society found strong links between high levels of small particles and a rise in death rates. In an article headlined, "Tiny Particles Can Kill" the August 5, 2000 issue of New Scientist pointed to findings in six cities over 16 years showing that "city-dwellers in Europe and the U.S. are dying young because of microscopic particles in the air."

According to the New York Times, "microscopic motes… are able to infiltrate the tiniest compartments in the lungs and pass readily into the bloodstream." Particles in the size range called for by the Welsbach Patent describing chemtrails are "most strongly tied to illness and early death, particularly in people who are already susceptible to respiratory problems." [New York Times Oct 14/06]

The Welsbach Patent calls for megatons of 10 micron-size aluminum oxide particles to be spread in the atmosphere. The EPA calls particles this small "an extreme human health hazard" leading to 5% increased death rate within 24 hrs.

"Hearts as well as lungs can be damaged by ultra-fine particles small enough to get into the bloodstream and inflame tissues and cells," reports the LA Times. "After they reach the heart, the particles are thought to cause a stress reaction in cells, producing inflammation that contributes to heart disease. The particles also may cause blood clots." [Los Angeles Times Dec 29/03]

The Neurotoxicology (brain poisoning) division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that exposure to airborne Particulate Matter "is an environmental health risk of global proportions." [Health Risks Of Aerosoled Particulates PubMed Abstract]The EPA explains that by penetrating deep into the lungs and circulatory system, these dust-size particles "are implicated in tens of thousands of deaths annually from both respiratory and coronary disease."

POP QUIZ: What do you think will happen when nano-size machines tens of thousands of times smaller than this are sprayed into the open air?

"SMART PARTICLES" IN YOUR BRAIN MAKE YOU DEAD - NOT SMARTER Nanoparticles might better be called Nastyparticles because they make a beeline for the brain as soon as they are inhaled. Not surprisingly, they tend to accumulate and clump in the area of the brain that deals with smell. Too big to pass back through the blood-brain barrier, they become trapped there. [Nature.com Jan 5/04]

Dr. Celine Filippi also observed that nanoparticles inhaled into the lungs are so mall they easily cross the lung barrier and enter the blood. "Particles in the blood can reach the liver, amongst other organs." [globalresearch.ca Oct 21/07]

NANO CHEMTRAILS So are we being sprayed with nano-chemtrails?

Owning The Weather 2025 was published in 1995 and discussed only non-classified military weather modification projects. Hall's Overview of Nanotechnology also appeared in 1995, when nanotech was in its Frankenstein infancy. Since then, many sources tell us, nanotech has gone exponential. [nanotech-now.com]

"They have them," he confirmed. The U.S. Air Force has occasionally added nanoparticles to the chemtrail mix to demonstrate proof of concept.

"We're way beyond science fiction," Hank confirmed. "You can hide just about anything you want in a chemtrail - including nanotubes. Chemtrails are being altered for whatever spectrum of wavelength they're trying to bounce off of them.

MORGELLONS What about Morgellons? Is there any connection between this bizarre and frightening malady and nano experiments?

"You're not going to like this," Hank said. "Morgellons is one unintended manifestation of nano spray experiments."

Morgellons manifests - or presents" - as intolerable itching in the skin followed by alien eruptions of thin hairs or tendrils through the skin. "It's basically the same as excreting something through a hair follicle," Hank said.

He meant a toxin - something foreign to the body.

"If you manufacture a liquid super-cyrstalline structure, vibrate it a little and give it an electrical charge - it will form into a chain."

These nanotubes will be invisible to the eye, of course. But their tendency to clump together could eventually make them big enough to be photographed and posted on the web.

chemtrail fallout

Morgellons

How much nanocrap has been sprayed so far?

"Tens of tons," he replied.

Tens of tons of molecules?

"Much of it is still up there," Hank went on to explain. This is because nanoparticles are so light and small they tend bind to bind with oxygen molecules. And piggybacking on oxygen particles makes them buoyant.

"It travels worldwide," Hank continued. "Some of it comes down. Whatever it's exposed to up there it brings down here. We get exposed to it. We breathe it in, we ingest it. It accrues in the same spot every time. And attracts more of it… "

In the liver.

And brain.

"The fallout would look like a prion disease," Hank said.

"Fallout from nanoparticles would eat holes in our brains?"

"Pretty much. Nano particles are ionized particles that go to what attracts them…. Because of their electro-chemical properties, they are attracted to the potassium-calcium channel in the brain."

Think about it, he said. "If they are capable of withstanding the corrosive upper atmosphere - corrosive sunlight and all those (industrial) chemicals - what would they have to be manufactured out of? Does the body manufacture anything that can deal with that? Who will come forward and say these are good?

NUISANCE

A person shall not discharge from any source whatsoever such quantities of air contaminants or other material which cause injury, detriment, nuisance, or annoyance to any considerable number of persons or to the public, or which endanger the comfort, repose, health or safety of any such persons or the public, or which cause, or have a natural tendency to cause, injury or damage to business or property. -EPA Air Quality Management Rule 402.

WHO NEEDS TO RELEASE Which 34 Samples They Used to Come to Their Conclusion

My thoughts regarding WHO's conclusions posted below regarding the Ukraine Sickness/Flu/Plague is they Now need to release - What 34 samples did they use to come to that analysis. (Official Statement - posted Below this morning also here.)

Considering the WHO's conclusion is in direct contrastto what British Scientist, who have examined the bodies, besides what the doctors of the Ukraine have said and the Health Minister of the Ukraine, even has said over and over.

Lets look at past information from the Health Minister of the Ukraine and other reliable information released: links to articles are in all titles!

NOW I AM SAYING TO THE WHO -"YOU ARE LYING IN YOUR OFFICIAL REPORT" !!

ALL OFFICIAL STATEMENTS AND EVIDENCE GO IN COMPLETE CONTRAST TO YOUR FINDINGS FROM 34 SAMPLES TESTED!

RELEASE WHAT 34 SAMPLES WERE TESTED - DID THOSE PEOPLE HAVE THE BLEEDING LUNGS, TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF THE LUNGS? DID YOU USE SAMPLES FROM THE UKRAINE HEALTH MINISTER'S DESCRIPTIONS OF CASES IN THE OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASES ABOVE?

MY STATEMENTS ABOVE ARE NOT BASED ON AIR - THEY ARE BASED ON OFFICIAL STATEMENTS FROM THE UKRAINE GOVERNMENT - NOW THE ONLY CONSPIRACY I SEE - IS WHO'S FINDINGS!

Like a lot of people, Anna Owens began using MySpace more than four yearsago to keep in touch with friends who weren't in college.

But soon she felt too old for the social-networking site, and thecustomizable pages with music that were fun at first began to annoy her. Bythe time she graduated from the University of Puget Sound, Owens' classmatesweren't on MySpace -- they were on Facebook.

Throughout graduate school and beyond, as her network began to expand, Owensceased using MySpace altogether. Facebook had come to represent the whole ofher social and professional universe.

"MySpace has one population, Facebook has another," said the 26-year-old,who works for an affordable-housing nonprofit in San Francisco, California."Blue-collar, part-time workers might like the appeal of MySpace more -- itdefinitely depends on who you meet and what they use; that's what motivatespeople to join and stay interested."

Is there a class divide online? Research suggests yes. A recent study bymarket research firm Nielsen Claritas found that people in more affluentdemographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook,while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.

More specifically, almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than$100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16 percent of MySpace users.On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn lessthan $50,000 annually, compared with about 28 percent of Facebook users.

MySpace users tend to be "in middle-class, blue-collar neighborhoods," saidMike Mancini, vice president of data product management for Nielsen, whichused an online panel of more than 200,000 social media users in the UnitedStates in August. "They're on their way up, or perhaps not collegeeducated."

By contrast, Mancini said, "Facebook [use] goes off the charts in theupscale suburbs," driven by a demographic that for Nielsen is represented bywhite or Asian married couples between the ages of 45-64 with kids and highlevels of education.

Even more affluent are users of Twitter, the microblogging site, andLinkedIn, a networking site geared to white-collar professionals. Almost 38percent of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year.

Nielsen also found a strong overlap between those who use Facebook and thosewho use LinkedIn, Mancini said.

Nielsen isn't the first to find this trend. Ethnographer danah boyd, whodoes not capitalize her name, said she watched the class divide emerge whileconducting research of American teens' use of social networks in 2006.

When she began, she noticed the high school students all used MySpace, butby the end of the school year, they were switching to Facebook.

When boyd asked why, the students replied with reasons similar to Owens:"the features were better; MySpace is dangerous and Facebook is safe; myfriends are here," boyd recalled.

And then, boyd said, "a young woman, living in a small historical town inMassachussetts said to me, 'I don't mean to be a racist or anything, butMySpace is like, ghetto.'" For boyd, that's when it clicked.

"It's not a matter of choice between Facebook and MySpace, it was a movementto Facebook from MySpace," she said, a movement that largely included theeducated and the upper-class.

So why do our online worlds, unencumbered by what separates us in dailylife, reflect humans' tendency to stick with what -- and who -- they know?

A lot of it has to do with the disparate beginnings of MySpace and Facebook,said Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief of Mashable, a blog about social media.Facebook originated at Harvard University and was limited at first tostudents at approved colleges before opening itself to the public inSeptember 2006.

MySpace, on the other hand, had a "come one, come all" policy and made a maddash towards monetization, Ostrow said. "They used a lot of banner adswithout regard to the quality, and it really diminished the value [of thesite] for the more tech-savvy demographic."

And while the Internet can build bridges between people on opposite sides ofthe globe, we still tend to connect with the same people through onlinesocial networks who we connect with offline, said technology writer andblogger Sarah Perez.

"It's effectively a mirror to our real world," she told CNN. "Socialnetworks are the online version of what kids do after school."

These social-networking divides are worrisome to boyd, who wrote "Taken Outof Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics." Instead ofallowing us to cross the boundaries that exist in our everyday lives, theseonline class differences threaten to carry those boundaries into the future.

"The social-network infrastructure is going to be a part of everything goingforward, just like [Web] search is," boyd said. "The Internet is not thisgreat equalizer that rids us of the problems of the physical world -- theInternet mirrors and magnifies them. The divisions that we have in everydaylife are going to manifest themselves online."

Jason Kaufman, a research science fellow with the Berkman Center forInternet and Society at Harvard University,examined the Facebook profiles ofa group of college students over four years and found that even withinFacebook, there's evidence of self-segregation.

Multiracial students tended to have more Facebook friends than students ofother backgrounds and were often the sole connection between white and blackcircles, Kaufman said.

Nonetheless, Kaufman feels that social networks may one day help us overcomeour instinct to associate with those who share our income level, education,or racial background.

"I think it's fair to say that the Web has great potential to at leastmitigate everyday tendencies towards self-segregation and social exclusion,"Kaufman said. "In some ways, [Facebook] levels the playing field offriendship stratification. In the real world, you have very close friendsand then there are those you just say "Hi" to when you pass them on thestreet.

"The playing field is a lot more level in that you can find yourself havinga wall-to-wall exchange with just an acquaintance. If you pick up theunlikely friend, not of your race or income bracket, the network may [helpyou] establish a more active friendship than if you met them in real life."

But MySpace's users still find something appealing about MySpace that theydon't about Facebook, and it may have nothing to do with class or race,blogger Perez said.

"It's not just the demographics that have people picking one over theother," Perez said. "It also comes down to what activities you like. If youlike music, you'll still be on MySpace. If you're more into applications,then you might go to Facebook because you're addicted to Mafia Wars orwhatever."

In the end, boyd isn't as concerned about the reasons behind these divisionsonline as she is about the consequences of people only networking withintheir chosen social-media groups.

"Friendships and family relationships are socially divided; peopleself-segregate to deal with racism sometimes," she said. "Okay, fine: We'vemade a decision to self-segregate, but what happens when politicians go onFacebook and think they're reaching the whole public? What happens whencolleges only go on Facebook to promote?"

When and if that does happen, Mashable's Ostrow said, we'll know perhapswe've given social networks more credit than they're worth. "When it comesto information, I don't think social networks are the best source for that.The Internet is so open," said Ostrow, who believes users would go beyondtheir networks to search out information online.

If you're looking to branch out of your social network box, your best optionmay be Twitter. Nielsen's survey didn't find a dominant social class onTwitter as much as they found a geographical one: Those who use Twitter aremore likely to live in an urban area where there's greater access towireless network coverage, Mancini said.

"The simplicity of Twitter definitely creates less of a divide, because it'snot a relationship like it is on MySpace or Facebook," Ostrow said. "If youlive in the middle of nowhere or you live in a city, you can follow anyoneabout anything."

Monday, October 12, 2009

17-Pound, 4-Month-Old Baby Denied Health Insurance for Being Too Fat

Monday , October 12, 2009

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Nothing brings a smile to an adult's face quicker than the sight of a happy, chubby baby.

But the sight of 4-month-old Alex Lange, who measures 25-inches long and weighs 17 pounds, is bringing a frown to the hypothetical face of insurance company Rocky Mountain Health Plans, The Denver Post reported on its Web site Monday.

Underwriters, the people who are in charge of assessing risk for insurance companies, have decided that baby Alex's pre-existing condition — obesity — makes him a high-risk patient and have denied him coverage.

"I could understand if we could control what he's eating. But he's 4 months old. He's breast-feeding. We can't put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill," joked his frustrated father, Bernie Lange, a part-time news anchor at KKCO-TV in Grand Junction. "There is just something absurd about denying an infant."

Bernie and Kelli Lange tried to get insurance with Rocky Mountain Health Plans when their current insurer raised their rates 40 percent after Alex was born.

After filling out the necessary paperwork, the broker who was helping the family find new insurance called last Thursday with the shocking news that Alex, who weighed 8 1/4-pounds at birth, was being denied coverage.

At 17 pounds, Alex is in the 99th percentile for height and weight for babies his age. His parents were told insurance companies don't take babies above the 95th percentile, no matter how healthy.

Dr. Doug Speedie, medical director at insurance company Rocky Mountain Health Plans, told KKCO-TV, it's possible for a baby to be above the 95 percentile and still be healthy, and admitted the system is flawed.

"Your weight is not an absolute determinate of health," Speedie said. "Unfortunately when we try to sell people insurance, a number has to be used as a cutoff."

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